The Benefits of Flash Photography

The Benefits of Flash Photography - This isn’t a long post, and certainly isn’t a dig at the natural light photographers out there.  It’s more of a way to show that using flash, controlling light etc can give you more pleasing images.

The two images below show the difference.  No editing has been done on either image, they are straight from camera.

The bright washed out background is without suing flash.  The well-exposed background and internal is using flash.

Why the big difference between flash & natural light?

In simple terms, the human eye can cope with the large differences between light and dark.  The camera cannot - so you have to fool  the camera by giving it more light.  This is called Dynamic Range.

How do you fool the camera?

There are a few ways but as a wedding photographer based in Cardiff who uses all kinds of flash I use the simple and quick way...

1.  Set the camera to P mode (Yes, P mode)

2. Take a photograph of the outside or sky.

3.  Remember the settings on the camera.

4. Set the camera to M mode

5. Put the settings you just memorised into the camera.

6.  Add the flash.

I add my flashgun on top of the camera and bounce the light into the ceiling.  The flash gun is set to eTTL (which is Canon's way of saying "let the camera handle all the exposure mathematics")

And that is about it.

Benefits of Flash Photography - So What?

Well, it all depends on the style of photography (and in my case Wedding Photography) you like.  My style is to go for moody clouds, sunbursts, sunset photography etc.  Due to the dynamic range (see above) you can not get the same effect without using some kind of flash photography. Yes, you 'may' be able to use reflectors but unless it's a very very big one then you're going to be lucky to get photographs, wedding or otherwise, like the two below. Again neither image has been edited.

Why I love Flash Photography

Simple.  I can't create my signature images without the use of or benefits of flash photography. Sunset photographs (shown below) are impossible to expose correctly for. And I just love sunsets! I run various workshops around photography and a very successful Wedding Photography Workshops.  All the images on this page are from delegate images.